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Hong Kong’s High Court has sentenced media tycoon Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison, in the most high-profile national security case in Beijing’s crackdown on the territory.
Lai, a 78-year-old billionaire media entrepreneur, was a supporter of the pro-democracy movement that rocked Hong Kong in 2019, and has long been a staunch critic of China.
His trial has been closely watched around the world as a barometer of press and political freedoms in Hong Kong after authorities in the semi-autonomous territory and in Beijing cracked down in response to the unrest.
In December, Lai was convicted on two counts of conspiring to collude with a foreign power and one count of conspiring to publish seditious materials through his media group, the now-closed pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily. The foreign collusion charges were levied under the national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020.
The court said on Monday that it had “no doubt whatsoever” that the collusion charges “fall within the category of offences of a ‘grave nature’”. It added that the sedition charge also fell within “the most serious category of its type”.
Lai had faced the possibility of life imprisonment under the national security law.
The sentence will dash hopes that US President Donald Trump, who vowed “100 per cent” to free Lai in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, or UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who, according to Downing Street officials, raised his case on a trip to Beijing last month, would be able to secure an earlier release. Lai is a British citizen.
UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said in a statement that 20 years was “tantamount to a life sentence” for Lai. She called on authorities to “end his appalling ordeal and release him on humanitarian grounds”.
Lai can appeal against the sentence, though his legal team has not said whether he will do so. He is diabetic and suffers from heart palpitations. His family and international legal team have said that he risks dying in prison, given his health condition.
In a statement, Sebastien Lai, Jimmy Lai’s son, said: “Sentencing my father to this draconian prison sentence is devastating for our family and life-threatening for my father. It signifies the total destruction of the Hong Kong legal system and the end of justice.”
A heavy police presence surrounded the West Kowloon Law Courts Building, where numerous national security-related hearings have been held. Visitors to the courtroom could be heard crying out during the proceedings.
Hong Kong chief executive John Lee said in a Chinese-language statement on Facebook that “the heavy sentence . . . demonstrates the rule of law and justice”.
Chinese authorities have portrayed Lai as a key agitator behind the unrest in 2019, which they have cast as an attempted “colour revolution” instigated by foreign forces via figures such as Lai.
Prosecutors in Hong Kong focused on Lai’s meetings between US officials, which they said demonstrated his efforts to get the US to impose sanctions on officials in China and Hong Kong in order to bring down the Chinese Communist Party.
Hong Kong operates a separate legal infrastructure from mainland China under the “one country, two systems” arrangement governing its handover from British administration in 1997.
Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office said that the sentencing “fully reflects Hong Kong society’s bitter hatred towards villains who are against China and disrupt Hong Kong”.
John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the US House of Representatives’ China committee, said the sentencing was “the latest stain on the human rights record of the Chinese Communist Party and the farce of its promise to uphold one country, two systems”. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Lai was first arrested in 2020 and has already spent five years in detention. He was previously sentenced to a series of jail terms over his alleged involvement in a banned vigil in 2020 to mark the anniversary of the bloody suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square and “unauthorised” anti-government protests, as well as for alleged fraud at his media group Next Media.
His latest trial has lasted 156 days. Lai’s co-defendants, including two activists and six former Apple Daily employees, received sentences ranging from six years and three months to 10 years.
Additional reporting by Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington